USA > New York > Franklin County > Historical sketches of Franklin county and its several towns > Part 76
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
Isaac B. Farrar, born at Fairfax, Vt., August 10, 1802, came to Malone in 1839, and removed to Burke a few years later, where he con- tinued to reside until 1884, when he retired from his life-long work as a farmer, and returned to Malone to pass his remaining years. Mr. Farrar was of upright life and ardent convictions - an abolitionist before the war, and so intensely patriotic that he enlisted in the Union army when he had passed the age of sixty years. Careful and prudent, he accumulated property to the amount of perhaps fifteen thousand dol- lars, and with the exception of legacies of five hundred dollars each to churches in Burke and Bellmont and in Malone, and a few personal remembrances, bequeathed it all as a trust fund to establish and endow the Farrar Home in Malone for Deserving Old Ladies. He died December 16, 1899.
Francis D. Flanders was born in Salisbury, N. H., in 1810, and came to Fort Covington with his parents about 1825 or 1826. While still in his youth he became associated with Samuel Hoard in the publication of the Franklin Republican, and was afterward with him in Ogdens- burg in the managament and editorship of the St. Lawrence Republican. Returning to Fort Covington, he established the Franklin Gazette in 1837, which he continued to own and edit until 1876, when he sold the business, though continuing as editor for some years afterward. In his younger years his editorial work was thoughtful and strong, and the paper was recognized as one of the ablest of Democratic country weeklies in the State. In Mr. Flanders's later years, however, he seemed to lose the inclination for extended editorial discussion, and to prefer inditing only pungent, stinging paragraphs, and selecting extracts from other papers in expression of his views, which were always extreme and radical. While published at Fort Covington the Gazette was outspoken in sympathy with the Canadian rebellion or Papineau cause, and was forbidden circulation in the Canadian mails. The office of publication was removed to Malone in 1847, and during the civil war the paper was so pronounced in upholding the constitutionality of secession and so bitter in denunciation of the Lincoln administration that Mr. Flan- ders was arrested and confined in Fort Lafayette and Fort Warren for about two months, and for nearly two years the Gazette was denied postal privileges in the United States. Mr. Flanders was member of the Assembly in 1844, county clerk 1853-6, postmaster of Malone during the Buchanan administration, and Presidential elector in 1868. He was for many years a member of the board of education of the village school district of Malone, and for a time its president. He died in Malone January 26, 1881.
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Joseph R. Flanders, a brother of Francis D., was born at Salisbury, N. H., in 1814. His home was in Fort Covington from about 1825 until 1847, when he removed to Malone. He was admitted to the bar at an early age, and in his spare hours did a good deal of writing for the Gazette, in which his articles usually appeared as editorials. He was scholarly, a finished and forceful writer, and especially delighted in dis- cussion of constitutional principles. He was a delegate to the conven- tion of 1846 to revise the State constitution, was member of Assembly in 1847, and the same year was elected county judge. In the factional strife which divided the Democratic party in 1848 and for a few years thereafter, he and Francis D. disagreed, and Joseph R. established in 1853 and for two years edited the Jeffersonian at Malone to urge his opinions and to represent the uncompromising or hunker wing of Democracy. It goes without saying that the Jeffersonian was exception- ally able and vigorous in its utterances, but it was discontinued when Mr. Flanders removed to New York city in 1885 to re-engage in the practice of the law, of which profession he was a notably strong and reputable exponent. He also was confined at Fort Lafayette and Fort Warren for a few weeks during the civil war. He returned to Malone in 1864 to become counsel for the O. & L. C. R. R. Co., but soon after- ward went to La Crosse, Wis., to engage in editorial work on " Brick " Pomeroy's once famous and widely circulated Democrat. In 1868 he located again in New York city, where he continued in the practice of the law until his health failed in 1886. Mr. Flanders was one of the strongest men intellectually that ever lived in Franklin county, a force- ful and captivating speaker, a man of intense and uncompromising con- victions, and of high character. He died at Richmond Hill, Long Island, November 5, 1886. There is a legend in the family that during a war, centuries ago, between England and Flanders (now a part of Belgium) soldiers from Salisbury, England, picked up a baby boy on a battle field, and, unable to find his parents or to learn anything about him, took him home with them, and named him Flanders from the fact that he was found there. This boy is said to have been the ancestor of all the Flanders in England and the United States.
Edward Fitch was born in Plattsburgh in 1820, and removed to Malone in his young manhood. He was admitted to the bar about 1850, and practiced with his brother-in-law, Ashbel B. Parmelce, until 1858, when he removed to New York city to become the law partner of ex-Governor Myron H. Clark, with whom he had formed intimate
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relations while the latter was Governor and Mr. Fitch member of Assem- bly. Mr. Fitch was elected to the Assembly in 1854 by a combination of Whigs, Knownothings and temperance forces. He died in New York in 1887.
Ashbel P. Fitch, son of Edward, was born in Malone in 1848, and removed with his father to New York in 1858. He was educated in the schools of New York city and in Germany, becoming almost as much a German in habits, language and associations as he was an American, though too earnestly and loyally imbued with American principles ever to have been in sympathy with imperialistic ideas and practices. Upon his return to New York he studied law, and practiced for several years. He was elected to Congress as a Republican by a large majority in 1886, and having become a Democrat on the tariff and excise questions was elected again and again as a Democrat by even larger majorities in the same district. He afterward served for two terms as comptroller of the city of New York, and about 1899 became president of the Trust Company of America, which at the time had the largest capital and surplus of any like institution in the world. Mr. Fitch was one of the most genial of men, possessed large abilities, and had a multitude of friends. He died suddenly May 3, 1904.
Alexander R. Flanagan, born at Waddington July 6, 1823,' began his business life in railroad employment, but engaged soon afterward in the hotel business at Rouses Point. In 1857 he purchased the Miller House. in Malone, and, until he leased the Ferguson House, continued as its manager. In 1881 he gave over the care of the business to his sons, although always himself recognized as the real head of the house. He- was a natural landlord, and no hotel man in the State was better known or more cordially liked by his guests and townsmen. He died July 30, 1894.
Moses W. Field, son of William, who lived in the Broughton neigh- borhood in Malone, and then in Bangor, was born at Watertown, and located at Detroit, Mich., at an early age. He accumulated a fortune. estimated at half a million dollars, and was elected to Congress in 1872 as a Republican. Later he became a Greenbacker, and had more than any other one man to do with the nomination of Peter Cooper for the Presidency. He died at Detroit March 14, 1889.
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J. Dennison Fisk, the time and place of whose birth I do not know, was a conspicuous figure in Franklin county sixty or seventy years ago. He was in trade here at various places, published a newspaper for a short time at Fort Covington, and was the first telegraph operator at Malone. He finally made advantageous business connections in New York city, and was in the wholesale boot and shoe trade there for years. Fun-loving, companionable and versatile, he had a host of friends in this north country, which he visited frequently. He died at Hartford, Conn., January 4, 1899.
Christopher R. Fay, born in County Antrim, Ireland, February 17, 1838, came to Canada with his parents as a boy, and then to Fort Cov- ington about 1852. As a youth he learned the trade of boot and shoe -- maker, but never found the work attractive or satisfying. All of his inclinations were to art, and before long he began to do portrait work - obtaining his paints and oils at a carriage paint shop. Even with such crude material he managed occasionally to turn out a piece of work that brought him a bit of money upon which to live. Then he took to the camera, and made the old-style tintypes and daguerreotypes of sixty years ago - apropos of which I recall that he used to insist that T. B. Cushman of Malone, a maker of matches in his final years, and once a local preacher, was undoubtedly the inventor of the tintype. Mr. Fay came to Malone shortly before the outbreak of the civil war, and made pictures with Seymour E. Buttolph. During the war he and Mr. Buttolph were with the army of the Potomac for most of the time, engaged in the same work and in photography. He returned to Malone, which he continued to make his home, except for a short time that he followed his profession in Syracuse. He was in partnership here at various times with Charles Ferris, Captain William H. Barney. George Farmer, M. C. Goodell, and perhaps others. He had a fine artistic sense, and for years his work was the best produced by any gallery in Northern New York. His crayon portraits in particular were of the best, and brought him much outside business as well as alluring offers to attach himself to city establishments. He died July 25, 1916.
Lyman J. Folsom, born in Bombay in 1836, located at Trout River in 1853, and a few years later engaged in merchandising there in com- pany with his father-in-law, Augustus Martin. The business did not prosper, and the firm had to make an assignment during the civil war. Afterward Mr. Folsom opened a store of his own, and did an immense
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
business both in merchandising and in speculating in livestock and farm products ; but misfortune again overtook him, and he again assigned. In 1876 he removed to Malone, where he conducted a livery business, and was elected sheriff in 1878 and again in 1884, carrying Malone by nearly a thousand majority, and the county by correspondingly large figures. Owing to his liberality to the poor, and to losses sustained in business, he became involved again financially in 1887, and, as though even then foreseeing the end, declared a year or two previously to friends that he would prefer to die rather than again go through bankruptcy. In March, 1887, after settling every account that he had with Malone creditors, he drove one day to Trout River, and there committed suicide. No man in the county was better liked.
Henry Furness, born at Bay St. Louis, Miss., February 24, 1850, came to Malone as a child with his mother after the death of his father, and after his school days here clerked in the drug store of Heath & Breed. He then connected himself with the Alabama State Hospital for the Insane for two or three years, and next studied medicine in New York city. His first field of practice was Windsor, Vt., where he remained until 1880, when he located at Malone, where he made a brilliant record in the profession, which interested him absorbingly and in the practice of which he was continually employing then novel, and perhaps startling, expedients, but which because of his marvelous suc- cesses became standard. He won and held a standing as a physician second to none in Northern New York. Dr. Furness inherited from a relative in California a comfortable fortune, and in his will, after numer- ous bequests to relatives and friends, gave $5,000 each to the Alice Hyde Memorial Hospital Association for the support of free beds for the poor, the Farrar Home for Deserving Old Ladies in Malone, the Home for the Friendless in Plattsburgh, and to Franklin Academy for scholar- ships ; $6,000 to St. Mark's Church, Malone, for the relief of the poor ; and $2,000 each to the board of education of the village of Malone and to the Wadhams Reading Circle for the purchase of books. These are all trust funds, the income from which is alone to be used for the pur- poses stated. Dr. Furness died after a long illness July 5, 1913.
Daniel Gorton, born at Pomfret, Vt., April 5, 1790, came to Malone in 1820, where he established a paper mill on the west side of the river at about where Earle's axe factory and then Ladd & Smallman's planing mill used to be. All paper was then made by hand. and it was Mr.
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
Gorton's custom to manufacture a quantity and peddle it himself through the country. When the time came that he was able to employ two girls in the mill he felt that the business had prospered greatly. Mr. Gorton was of superior abilities, and was a born agitator and reformer. He organized here the first temperance society ever formed in Northern New York, and though he was criticized and opposed by the clergy as undertaking to interfere with personal liberty persisted in his work of lecturing in advocacy of teetotalism and prohibition. He became also an anti-Mason, and after his removal from Malone to Lowell, Mass., which occurred in 1831, he was enlisted in the anti-slavery crusade as an ardent abolitionist, and was the close friend of William Lloyd Garrison and his coadjutor in the cause. Mr. Gorton died at Lowell in 1875.
Theodore Gay, the last survivor but one of the early physicians of Malone, was born in Bridport, Vt., April 1, 1812, the son of a physician, and the cost of his education, which included the course at Middlebury College, was the whole of his patrimony. After graduation at college, he taught school in Western New York and in Georgia to obtain means for pursuing his medical studies. Receiving his degree, he established himself in 1840 at Westville, and finding it a rather barren field moved after a short time to Fort Covington. But there the practice was prac- tically monopolized by Dr. Roswell Bates, so that there was no business for a young doctor, and in 1842 he came to Malone. The physicians of that time filled a niche in the life of a community that can scarcely be comprehended to-day. They not only ministered to the physical ills, but were the intimate friends, the mentors and the monitors of their patients, and so interwove their lives with these that they contributed in a large measure to the moulding of character. Of all the doctors of that period in Malone - and as a class they made the place famous as a center of medical skill - Dr. Gay had the profoundest mind, and the least regard for matters outside of his profession. Gentle as a woman, refined in thought and expression, radiating sunshine in the sick room, he practiced as if it all were a labor of love, with no element of material recompense entering into it. Indeed, he was wont himself to say in entire sincerity that if he could afford it he would never make any charge at all for his services; and the charges that he did make were grotesquely insignificant - a half a dollar per visit within the village limits, except that for a Sunday call the fee was a dollar; from one to two shillings for office advice and treatment; and for a trip into the country as far
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
as Bellmont, in storm of rain or sleet or in zero weather, from a dollar to a dollar and a half. And these fees included medicines, and, more often than not, were paid in orders on a merchant or in produce - stockings at a dollar a pair, butter at ten cents a pound, veal at two and a half cents a pound, chickens at a shilling apiece, etc. In 1880 Dr. Gay virtually gave up his general practice in order to devote himself almost continuously to the care of Vice-President Wheeler, receiving next to nothing for his services while Mr. Wheeler lived, and only a thousand dollars by the latter's will for six or seven years of attention. The doctor had at first no feeling of resentment, but only grief that he had been so hardly treated. As time passed, however, and friends sym- pathized with him and expressed indignation, he became as bitter as his kindly nature would permit, and filed a claim against the estate, which was eventually paid at ten thousand dollars. Dr. Gay loved books, both the text books of his profession and the best literature, and he had a wonderfully retentive memory. One afternoon he called at my office, and, picking up a book of quotations, read from it here and there, from Byron, Shakespeare and others, a couplet or fragment of a stanza, con- tinuing from memory to repeat verse after verse until they joined to the next printed quotation. Dr. Gay died January 20, 1899.
William W. Gay, born in Malone in January, 1854, studied law and was admitted to the bar after graduation from Franklin' Academy and Middlebury College, but, finding the practice distasteful, turned his attention to journalism about 1881, in which his success has been pro- nounced. His first connection was with the Springfield (Mass.) Repub- lican, and he has since been on various Chicago and New York city dailies - at times as a special correspondent where assignments were important and service required discretion and judgment, but usually in the home office, where he has filled nearly every responsible position, including general and political editorial work. Of retentive memory, broadly read, indefatigable in application, and strong and brilliant as a writer, Mr. Gay has emphatically " made good." He has been on the New York World for several years past.
Sidney W. Gillett, born at Essex, Vt., February 21, 1816, came to Franklin county in 1835, and had his home at various times in Chateau- gay, Constable, Malone and Montreal. He began clerking for Meigs & Wead in 1837, and two years later opened a store of his own at Trout River Lines, and a few years afterward at Constable Corners. He dealt
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
in practically everything that home customers wanted or that was dispos- able in the Montreal market or to the contractors who were then build- ing the Beauharnois canal - including lumber, horses, nearly all kinds of other livestock, pot and pearl ashes, and farm produce. After closing out his mercantile business in Constable, he was in Montreal for a year, dealing in lumber, and removed to Malone in 1854, where he was in partnership in merchandising with Colonel Charles Durkee for several years, and afterward continued the store alone, dealt largely in real estate, erected a number of houses, became a hop grower, and for a time ran a tannery in Burke. At the time of locating in Malone he had accumulated a comfortable competence. About 1871 he bought an interest in the Owls Head iron mine, and in the work of developing it sunk a considerable part of his fortune. Mr. Gillett had the trading faculty in a remarkable degree, and used it with a keen shrewdness and sagacious judgment - continuing such operations in a small way years after he had practically retired from active business pursuits. Though not conspicuously active in public affairs, he had a thorough interest in them, and quietly was an carnest supporter of projects for the general welfare. He died June 24, 1902.
Daniel D. Gorham was born in Rutland, Vt., September 8, 1819, and was principal of Franklin Academy for a number of years in the fifties. He then taught at Montpelier, Vt., for eleven years, and after- ward at Northampton, Mass., where he died. October 26, 1891.
William Gillis was born at Cornwall, Ont., June 22, 1822, and passed his youth at Dundee. He was admitted to the practice of medicine in 1849, and practiced at Fort Covington from that date until his final illness in 1894. Dr. Gillis interested himself in politics at an early date, and became one of the most conspicuous and influential Republicans in the northern part of the county. Positive and rather aggressive, he naturally aroused antagonisms, and was the leader in some of the bit- terest town contests for party control that were ever fought in the county, though toward the close of his life all of this feeling died out, and by common consent he was recognized as leader. He filled many town offices with profit to the people and credit to himself, and was also school commissioner for two terms in the second commissioner district. He died February 17, 1894.
George G. Gurley, born in Hopkinton August 19, 1825, located at Chateaugay in 1851, where for several years he was station agent, then 24
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HISTORY OF FRANKLIN COUNTY
deputy collector of customs, and also a dealer in produce and lumber. He was elected sheriff as a Republican in 1863, and after the expiration of his term made his home in Malone, engaging in the tin and stove business, and afterward in dry goods with D. F. Seper and E. R. Hott. He was elected supervisor in 1886, and continued to hold the office until his death. It was said of him that he was always "helping some one every day of his life," and when he died thousands of dollars in worth- less notes were found among his papers. As the key to understanding of his big heart and character it needs only to add that these in no way impeached his sagacity, but merely confirmed the quoted estimate of him. In temperament he was remarkably self-poised, and his judg- ment of the best. He died March 20, 1891.
Samuel Greeno, born in Malone December 31, 1831, was the son of Samuel, who became a merchant here in 1821, and continued in trade with hardly a break, though in many different lines and at different stands, for almost sixty years - making his trips to market in the early times on horseback. The son became a clerk in his boyhood with Meigs & Wead, and from that time to the date in 1866 when he entered upon business for himself was behind the counter for many other merchants. Mr. Greeno and Henry B. Austin established the first distinctively ladies' store the town ever had. The firm was notably enterprising and accommodating, was widely known, and did a large business. Mr. Greeno was public spirited and popular. He died February 13, 1896.
John Ingersoll Gilbert, born at Pittsford, Vt., October 11, 1837, came to Malone in 1861 to become principal of Franklin Academy, in which position he served for six years with great acceptability to the trustees of the institution and with marked satisfaction and incalculable benefit to his pupils. I question if there was ever one of the latter who in mature years could recall any teacher who had helped him as much as Mr. Gilbert, or for whom a greater admiration and a profounder respect abided. Naturally impetuous and quick to wrath, he yet had an infinity of patience with even the dullest student who was trying honestly to do his duty and master his work. He was thorough, and invested his work in the class room with an interest and charm that evoked the earnest attention of pupils and went far to develop their minds. Upon the conclusion of his service as principal of the academy, Mr. Gilbert opened a law office in Malone, and continued actively in practice until his death. By temperament and habit of thought he was
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far better adapted to appeals work than to the trial of cases, for he was inclined to insistence upon reaching the crux of a question as directly as possible, and it irked him to be under compulsion to give attention to the technicalities of procedure. The merits of a case outweighed every- thing else, and the mere rules of practice seemed non-essentials. Had he had connections which would have made his work mainly a study of principles and of argument before the higher tribunals his abilities must have assured him a rank with the foremost members of the bar. Intensely interested in public policies and problems of government, Mr. Gilbert was as positive a partisan as there was in the State, and for thirty years or more was "on the stump " in every important campaign for the Republican cause. Of profound scholarship, as a speaker he measured his words with marvelous accuracy and with the finest shades of meaning, and, though he never reduced more than two or three addresses to writing, every speech that he made was of a finish and dovetailing that gave occasion for no revision for publication. When indignant over a wrong or a sham every syllable cut like a rapier, and his emphasis of "infamous," " damnable " and other like characterizing words gave each its full and penetrating significance. Mr. Gilbert had neither taste nor aptitude for political management, and all of the recognition that he ever had in a public way came to him solely because of his intellectuality and belief in his moral fibre. He served three terms in the Assembly and one in the Senate, was a delegate at large to the Republican national convention in 1884, was defeated as a candidate for secretary of State in 1891, and was a member of the constitutional convention of 1894. He served also for a number of years as a member of the board of education of the village school district of Malone, and for a long time was president of the board of trustees of the Northern New York Institution for Deaf-Mutes. In the Legislature Mr. Gilbert was a man of mark and force from the first, and always stood squarely and immovably for measures that promised good to the State. He died December 19, 1904.
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